


The Temple of the Crocodile Queen

by Anonymous



Category: The Mummy Series
Genre: Adventure, Archaeology, Canon-Typical Violence, Established Relationship, F/M, Mummies, Obnoxious University Students
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-17 12:53:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29100582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: A year after the events of the first movie, Evy, with Rick and Jonathan along for the ride, is trying her hand at doing some proper archaeology instead of just treasure hunting.  She has official university backing and everything.  It goes as well as can be expected for the Carnahan-O'Connell family.
Relationships: Evy Carnahan O'Connell/Rick O'Connell
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2
Collections: Five Figure Fanwork Exchange 2020





	The Temple of the Crocodile Queen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shinykari (meinterrupted)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/meinterrupted/gifts).



**Egypt, a few dozen miles west of Lake Moeris:**

It was an ordinary day at Evelyn Carnahan-O'Connell's dig site, which was itself also very ordinary and all by the book without even a whiff of anyone raising the dead, accidentally or on purpose, thank you very much. It was an ordinary day just like the whole month of other ordinary days which came before it, to the point that in Rick's mind they were all starting to blur together into an indistinguishable haze of identical days spent supervising university students and hired locals digging under the hot sun rolling across clear blue skies and nights spent getting ready to do it again the next day. There were no great quests to defeat ancient evil happening there, not even any real expectations of finding fabulous hidden riches, though everyone still had hopes and dreams of catching that first glint of gold as they sifted through the sand. It was just an ordinary archaeological excavation digging up ordinary artifacts which would be cataloged and then distributed between various collections. If they were lucky, a few might be interesting enough to end up on display where members of the public could see them while everything else sat in storage rooms, forgotten by everyone but the few people who spent their careers studying such things.

Yes, everything was so painfully ordinary that Rick was more than ready to admit to himself that he was bored, though not yet as bored as he had been in England before the university had offered Evy the opportunity to lead this expedition. He wasn't quite ready to admit as much to Evy yet, though he was sure that she already had her suspicions, because he figured that his boredom was a small price to pay for getting to watch the woman he loved be able to engage in the work she loved. Even so, it was something of a relief when this otherwise ordinary day was suddenly punctuated by the sounds of a minor confrontation happening outside of the tent which served as the main office for the dig while Evy, Rick, and Jonathan took a hurried late lunch break within. The fact that the three of them were all focused on eating as quickly as possible so they could get back to work was the only reason why they had not been having any conversation of their own to alert anyone to their presence through the thin fabric walls.

It all started with a voice, which sounded suspiciously like one of the university students, Charlton Somebodyorother-Somethington The Third. Evy probably knew the rest of it, since she was the one who was officially the kid's boss for the duration of the dig and had to sign off on his paperwork. Rick, on the other hand, couldn't be bothered to remember the kid's whole name, but the kid made sure to emphasize _the Third_ every damn time he introduced himself to anybody, so that part was hard to forget. Rick hoped the kid's parents found that kind of behavior just as annoying as everyone else did, but he also figured there was a better than even chance that they had been the ones to encourage it, in which case they were probably as insufferable as their kid was. And when had he gotten old enough to start grumpily thinking about how parents chose to raise their kids?

Anyway, they could hear Charlton, who was probably only standing where he was so as to take advantage of the strip of shade between the one tent and the next one over, call someone over to him and tell them that he knew where to find the secret entrance to a tomb which they could work on breaking into after dark when no one would catch them. They could loot the tomb and sell the contents for a big profit instead of breaking their backs working for the low wages their current employers were paying them.

Evy and Rick both clapped a hand over Jonathan's mouth to keep him from giving their presence away with his inevitable loud complaints that the digger was planning to steal from them. Given the contracts which everyone on the dig up to and including Evy herself had signed, any artifacts collected while on the expedition belonged to the university they were working for and/or the Egyptian government. But it wasn't a good time to get into arguments about semantics.

As it was, in their efforts to shush Jonathan, they almost missed the next part of the conversation, in which the second voice, Charlton hadn't bothered using a name and the guy was doing a better job of keeping his voice low, making him more difficult to identify, said that idea sounded more like breaking his back for their current employers during the day and then breaking his back all over again on a risky gamble at night, working himself into an early grave twice as fast from all the extra work with no guarantee of extra reward for his efforts. And even if they did find something, who's to say it won't have a curse on it, dumbass? Didn't you hear about all those poor souls a few years ago who signed up for what was supposed to be simple labor for a group of Americans and all sorts of terrible stuff happened to them, and the few who didn't die out in the desert died when the biblical plagues started revisiting Cairo?

Charlton haughtily called the other guy a superstitious fool who was too scared of fairy tales to ever make any real money

Other Guy, who Rick was beginning to like a lot better than Charlton, just on principle, said Charlton was the one who was a fool who believed too many fairy tales, because if there was an easily accessible tomb somewhere nearby then it would have already been looted ages ago, and what happened in Cairo wasn't a story. Other Guy knew because he had been there and seen the fireballs himself as they rained out of the sky.

The argument quickly escalated to include the muted sounds of a physical confrontation.

All three members of the Carnahan-O'Connell peeked out through an opening between sections of the tent's canvas so they could get a look at what was happening instead of just listening, and yes, that was definitely Charlton scuffling with one of the diggers, Omar if Rick wasn't mistaken. Once the three were certain of that information, they held a rapid conversation consisting of nothing but gestures and a few mouthed words. Then, with a plan agreed upon, they exited the tent on the far side from the fight and then looped around so that they appeared to be just arriving on the scene for the first time, talking loudly about dig business as they made their final approach so there would be no chance of anyone thinking that they were sneaking around.

"As if I would ever sneak around my own dig site!" Evy quietly huffed under cover of Jonathan's much louder monologue about the state of the camp commissary's supplies.

"I seem to recall we've been doing some pretty entertaining sneaking around here multiple nights a week," Rick whispered back with a grin. 

"Avoiding my brother's hypocritical prudery regarding the two of us is an entirely different matter," Evy whispered. Then, at a more typicaly conversational volume for the benefit of any potential audience, she said, "Make sure you order extra bananas next time, Jonathan. We're always running out of fruit."

"No, go with extra dates," Rick said as they passed the gap between the two tents. "They keep longer than-- Hey!," Rick interrupted himself with a shout, as if becoming aware of the fight for the first time, "Knock it off you two and get back to work!"

Charlton and Omar immediately pushed away from each other. Omar took off at a run with only a worried backward glance, while Charlton stayed behind to play the wounded party.

"That- that _menial worker_ just accosted me for no reason," Charlton spluttered with rage while brushing off the front of his clothes. "I demand that you fire him!"

"I guess you just can't trust anybody these days," Rick drawled.

Mistaking Rick's statement for agreement, Charlton gave a haughty nod as if wordlessly declaring the matter settled and already forgotten, then he turned on his heel and stalked away.

"I can't quite claim I never trusted that guy," Rick said quietly, watching him go, "but this really drives home why I never liked that guy, and now I definitely don't trust him."

"I'm not particularly fond of what we just witnessed either," Evy said, "but he comes from a powerful family who'll try to make trouble if we sack him based on an overheard conversation we can't prove we overheard."

"So what do we do?"

Evy frowned as she thought for a moment, then she said, "Keep an eye on him, Rick. If he really knows about a better nearby site that he wants to poach for himself, at some point he's going to need to sneak away to get there. I don't think he'll try to do it in broad daylight, but just in case, let's not give him the chance. Meanwhile, you, Jonathan, should go make friends with Omar if you can, nothing that too obviously singles him out for special treatment while Charlton might see, but he seems to deserve a little bit of good fortune headed his way."

"And it might help keep him from changing his mind about changing sides," Rick concluded.

"Exactly," Evy agreed.

"And what are you going to do, Evy?" Jonathan asked.

"I'll be doing what the university hired me to do," Evy said, "supervising everything."

It wasn't an idle boast. Evy really was the highest authority at the dig site. It was only a minor expedition, more of a training exercise for Evy's students than the kind of academic glory anyone with an interest in archaeology had been dreaming of since the 1922 discovery of King Tut's tomb. However, after the events of Hamunaptra and not being able to provide proof of its existence out of fear of someone trying to wake Imhotep once more, Evy hadn't really expected to get any work in the field ever again. Therefore, even a summer spent excavating a lowly site frequented by the more down to earth section of Ancient Egypt was a welcome chance.

It appeared to be a village for workers, with rows and rows of simple dwellings and the miscellaneous detritus of daily life like fire pits and middens full of broken pottery (the utilitarian kind, not the fancy funerary kind) and fish bones and eggshells and other kitchen refuse. This expedition wasn't looking for glory and riches, at least not officially, just information. There was the occasional bit of jewelry or small statuette of one of ancient Egypt's many gods left behind on some forgotten workman's personal altar that got unearthed along the way, but this wasn't the kind of place where anyone has much expectation of turning up major treasure like what might be found in a temple or a tomb. On the other hand, no one expected to find any mummies, either, which suited the Carnahan-O'Connell family just fine for the moment. None of them were really in the mood for another encounter with the undead or even the regular dead just yet.

The fact that the place was a worker village meant that it was not an entirely permanent settlement, so everything was more bare bones basic than a more traditional long term community. However, it also implied that the workers were staying in the area to work on some kind of big project, but no one was entirely sure what exactly it was. The man who offered Evy the job, an old friend of her father going back to their school days, had speculated to her that they might have been mining materials for embalming, but so far they had found no concrete evidence one way or the other. Maybe Charlton's claims of a hidden temple nearby weren't so far-fetched.

Rick did his best to keep track of the Charlton without alerting him that he was being followed. Since he was one of the people who was semi in charge (or at least married to the person who was actually in charge, so he gained some authority by association), Rick had free run of the dig site. No one was going to tell him he couldn't go somewhere. No one would so much as ask him about what he was doing unless they were planning to offer to help. However, he was also the only six foot four white guy in the area, so he was pretty visually distinctive. He could go wherever he wanted, but everyone was going to notice him as he went. With sneaking out of the question, Rick needed to pretend to be doing stuff related to supervising the dig so that it seemed like just a coincidence that he was constantly in the same place as Charlton or at least somewhere with the guy in a direct line of sight.

This resulted in Rick spending more time listening to people talk about potsherds than at any previous point in his entire life, which was really saying something, because Evy had taken him to a lot of boring dinner parties populated by archaeologist friends of her parents during their time in England. Rick wasn't sure if the university students talking his ear off while showing him broken pieces of plain ceramic were genuinely interested in the stuff or just pretending as a demonstration that they were Serious Archaeologists ready to be assigned to work on the dazzling golden treasure and monumental statues. He hoped it was the former, because the latter would be pretty stupid seeing as how if Rick, Evy, or the university which they were working for knew where any unclaimed monumental statues or stashes of dazzling golden treasure were located, then they would be working to secure those first instead of waiting for the students to first pass some kind of unofficial performance review.

Anyway, the upshot was that Rick was able to position himself to keep an eye on Charlton for the rest of the shift without seeming to raise anyone's suspicions, but it required mumbling vague noises that were simultaneously encouraging and noncommittal until his throat was dry, and he was pretty sure that he had accidentally given at least one of the students the mistaken impression that he was taking a special interest in mentoring them in the ways of treasure hunting, shooting, and general adventuring. Considering that the student in question still got winded by walking up short hills even after a month of field work, Rick didn't think that was such a great idea but was going to wait a few days before saying so.

Luckily for Rick, even the longest summer day couldn't last forever. The work day ended as the sun begins to dip closer to the horizon. At the appointed time, diggers put aside their tools and walked down to the small tent city which made up their temporary home, which was in many ways very similar to the ancient workers' village which they were excavating. (Jonathan liked to wax poetic about the irony. Rick just thought people were people, whatever millennium they lived in. Evy smiled and refused to take sides, more due to being distracted by inspecting recent finds with a magnifying glass than any need to keep the peace between her brother and husband.) As usual, everyone was tired but not completely exhausted, because Evy knew better than to try to work everyone to death for the sake of slightly faster progress. Some collect evening rations which had been prepared in the commissary. Others choose to take the raw ingredients and cook their own meals, roasting bite sized pieces of meat on skewers over their campfires while they sat together and drank tea and shared cigarettes or hooka pipes. It's a convivial atmosphere which highlighted the emptiness of the darkening desert beyond the small cluster of the camp's lanterns and fires.

Rick was still keeping a surreptitious eye on Charlton. Jonathan had parted ways with Omar earlier in the day, reporting back to Evy and Rick that Omar wasn't interested in a drinking companion, since he didn't drink, but the man played a mean enough game of backgammon that it was easy for Jonathan to hand over a reasonable sum of money to the man in the form of failed wagers without looking like Jonathan had been letting him win since there hadn't been any 'letting' about it. This meant that Jonathan was currently the best rested of the Carnahan-O'Connell family (technically just Carnahan in Jonathan's case, but close enough) and has no excuse not to take a turn watching Charlton while Rick and Evy hurried to collect a few supplies to take with them when they inevitably followed Charlton, just in case they end up spending more time out in the desert than they expected.

Charlton's tent was, either by coincidence or premeditated design, located on the far edge of the camp, which allowed him to enter his tent shortly after full dark under the pretext of going to bed for the night and then slip out through the back flap and away into the desert without anyone being the wiser. Or, rather, no one would have been the wiser if Rick and Evy hadn't known it was coming. Once they had collected their supplies, settled in wait, passing the time with a romantic little picnic under the stars, hidden in the deeper shadows of some boulders a few dozen yards away with a clear line of sight to the backside of Charlton's tent.

"You know, Rick," Evy said in between delicate nibbles from a sandwich made of cheese on flatbread, "I think maybe we should do this more often."

Rick chuckled. "Which," he asked as he leaned in closer, not for any particular reason, just because he wanted to be closer to his wife and there wasn't any reason not to be, "the moonlit picnic, or the spontaneous adventure?"

"Both," Evy said. She took another bite of her sandwich and leaned in to Rick just as much as he was leaning into her. They both knew they couldn't let themselves get too distracted from their surveillance, but that didn't mean that they couldn't take the time to enjoy simply being up close and in each other's space in ways that weren't entirely proper to do during the workday. And for once they didn't even need to sneak out of earshot of Jonathan to do it. 

"I'll drink to that," Rick said. He raised his thermos full of hot tea (plus a shot or two of whiskey) in a toast and then passed it to Evy so she could do the same. She elbowed him slightly in the ribs when she tasted how he had bastardized their tea but made no other complaint about it. Rick just laughed and stole a bite of her sandwich in retaliation, having long ago finished his own thanks to being a much less dainty eater.

Of course, the interlude couldn't last as long as they would have liked.

As soon as Jonathan saw Charlton go inside the tent, he ducked around the side of the next tent over and used a flashlight to signal to Evy and Rick to alert them that it was almost time. Seeing the signal, the couple put away their food and drink, so they were ready to follow their quarry when a few minutes later he crept out the backside of his tent and started carefully making his way over the rocky ground.

Evy and Rick silently followed Charlton while Jonathan stayed behind to make sure that no one followed them, whether it was Omar or someone else. When one of the university students found Jonathan a little while later while looking for Evy to get her to answer a question he had about future plans for the dig, Jonathan could honestly tell him that, "The last I saw, she and Rick were sneaking off together. I don't like thinking about what my sister gets up to when they're alone, but I'd say it's a reasonable guess that, whatever they're doing, they don't want anyone to disturb them for the next few hours." 

Evy and Rick followed Charlton up the long, winding valley. The lights from camp vanish from sight after the first turn. After that, Charlton turned on a flashlight to help him along his way. Evy and Rick of course couldn't do the same without risk of giving away that they were following him the first time he happened to turn in their direction. Luckily, the moon and stars were bright enough that the couple could easily find their way now that their eyes had had plenty of time to adjust to the darkness. This continued for about an hour. They estimated that they walked maybe a couple of miles, though thanks to the twists and turns of the valley, it probably was not nearly that far from camp as the crow flies.

At last, Charlton arrived at his destination, a dark hollow between two tall pillars of rock standing on a stone outcrop most of the way up the slope on the western side of the valley. It was too dark to see if the pillars were man made structures which had weathered away over the millennia to rough irregularity or if they were natural formations, at least not without getting closer. Charlton climbed up a large slab of rock whose position allowed it to act as a steep ramp leading to the platform, and then he disappeared into the shadows between the pillars, dispelling them slightly with the glow of his flashlight but not entirely. Soon, the faint sounds of metal chipping away at rock carried through the night air to where Evy and Rick had stopped to observe the situation.

"I didn't see him carrying a shovel or any other tools," Rick muttered quietly, wary of how well their voices might carry through the rocky valley. "Did you?"

"No," Evy confirmed, just as quietly. "That means that this isn't a rumor he's just now decided to check out. He's been here before." Even in whispers, there was anger noticeable in her voice, anger that someone would dare to abuse the rules of her dig site for their own personal gain.

Rich reached out, found her hand by feel without taking his eyes away from Charlton's location, threaded his fingers through hers, and gave her hand a gentle squeeze of solidarity. "It could mean that," he said. "Or, it could mean that he's working with someone. Or it could mean both."

"And until we're sure which it is, we need to keep a sharp eye out," Evy said, and from the corner of his eye Rick could see the faint motion of her nodding decisively in the darkness.

"Exactly,"he said.

After a little bit more quiet discussion, the pair decided to sneak closer and climb up the "ramp" leading to where Charlton was digging and try to capture him if they could. Up close, they discovered that there were small, shallow depressions carved into the rock at even intervals, probably not easily visible until a person was practically right on top of them, even in full daylight. It made the going easier than it otherwise might have been, but the rock was still steep enough that it did not qualify as truly easy, especially not for Rick, who has to climb it with a coil of rope in one hand so that he could have it immediately at the ready to use on Charlton as soon as he got to the top.

Soon, they were in position and ready to spring.

They managed to sneak up on him, but during the struggle Charlton manages to get one of Rick's guns our of his holster and get a shot off, which grazed Rick's ribs. It was not immediately life threatening, but it stung something fierce, and the ensuing scuffle to disarm Charlton sent the gun sailing out of Charlton's hand to clatter down the rock they just climbed up and be lost somewhere down among in the darkness.

Charlton didn't seem even a little bit sorry about any of that, just sorry that they had caught him and were tying him up. "This is my find!" he shouted, partly from anger and partly from not being used to the ringing in the ears that followed being in close proximity to a gun going off. "I'm the one who located the Temple of the Crocodile Queen, and you have no right to take it from me!"

"That's where you're wrong," Rick said as he tied Charlton's hands behind him then wrapped another loop of rope around the man's body and tied that too. "You see, the Egyptian government granted the university we're working for the right to excavate anywhere in this valley through the end of next year on the condition that we split what we find with them. Judging by the way that you're sneaking off on your own in the middle of the night, I'm guessing they didn't grant you a separate deal. That means either anything you find belongs to our same dig or you're stealing." He punctuated his statement by yanking on the ropes to make sure all the knots were tight, making Charlton stagger slightly to keep his footing under the force of it.

"I bet you didn't even try to fill out the mountain of paperwork I had to go through," Evy seethed. "It was enormous. And to make matters worse, they wanted everything in triplicate!"

"She spent weeks cursing her way through it," Rick confirmed, "and librarians usually love organizing giant piles of hard to read papers."

Charlton gave a disdainful sniff and pretended not to notice that Rick had moved on to using the rest of the remaining rope to tie Charlton to one of the pillars. "And yet you wonder why I'd want to do this on my own," he said.

"We don't wonder," Evy said. "We just happen to strenuously object, and the Egyptian government will too when they find out that you don't want to give them their cut. And speaking of cuts...." Her voice trailed off as she raised a hand toward where blood was beginning to visibly seep through the side of Rick's shirt.

"It's not as bad as it looks," Rick insisted, but at the sight of his wife's worry, he added, "but you can judge for yourself since this jerk isn't going anywhere anytime soon."

Evy reached out once again and this time pulled up Rick's shirt to take a look at the bullet graze using Charlton's flashlight. They could have used their own, which Rick had tucked away in a pocket, but Charlton's was already near at hand and turned on. Also, there was no need to let him know they had their own light sources with them, just in case anything went wrong before they got back to camp. By the light of the electric bulb, she could see that it was indeed just a scrape along the skin over Rick's ribs. If it had been a fraction of an inch to one side, it wouldn't have touched him at all. On the other hand, if it had gone a fraction of an inch to the other side, then they could have been dealing with a shattered rib or worse right now. She spared a moment to glower in Charlton's general direction, but the man just stood there, leaning against the pillar Rick had tied him to, looking petulant, and even if he had shown the slightest shred of repentance, which he didn't, that wouldn't have been at all helpful, so the went back to ignoring him and returned her full attention to her husband.

"This might sting a little," she said as she reached for her canteen to rinse out the wound.

Rick stopped her, saying, "Probably shouldn't waste our water like that." The implication of 'because technically we're out in the desert without having told anyone where we were going, and even Jonathan can only guess right now' went unspoken but was clearly understood. "Besides," he added with a wry smile, "I have something that'll do the job a little better, though there's definitely no 'might' about whether it'll sting." He took out a pocket flask and offered it to Evy.

Instead of taking it from Rick's hand, Evy eyed the flask suspiciously. "If you were going to bring plain whiskey with you, why did you also need to defile our tea with it? Also, isn't this Jonathan's?" she said with a frown.

"He picks my pocket often enough that it's only fair if I occasionally return the favor," Rick said. "And it's a lucky thing I did," he continued as he unscrewed the cap, releasing the scent of high quality and, more importantly, high proof booze, "because this stuff smells like it should disinfect anything." He made no attempt to answer her first question.

"Every man in my life is incorrigible," Evy sighed and finally accepted the flask from him.

"We'd start boring you if we weren't."

"Certain kinds of boredom are underrated," Evy said and applied a splash of the stolen booze to Rick's bleeding wound.

"Maybe you're right," Rick hissed, sucking in a breath through his clenched teeth. Yes, that definitely stung.

"I'm always right," Evy said. Then she pressed a linen handkerchief over the wound to try to stem the bleeding and tore off strips from Rick's shirttails to tie it in place. And with that, it was time for them to head back to camp.

It took Rick and Evy another hour of walking to get back to camp, because the time they would have gained by not needing to sneak anymore was instead spent in managing Charlton. They didn't want to risk letting him run off into the night, so after they untied him from the pillar they kept his hands bound behind his back and took a short length of rope and tied the ends to his ankles so that he could only take short steps. Thus partially hobbled and unable to move his arms much to correct his balance, Charlton needed Rick and Evy's help to stay upright as they made their way over the uneven ground of the valley floor.

It was somewhere around midnight when they got back to camp, but neither Evy nor Rick could crawl into bed after a long day yet. Evy needed to fill in Jonathan (who they had found napping wrapped up in their abandoned picnic blanket awaiting their return with their still mostly full thermos of spiked tea held cradled in his arms like a baby) on everything he had missed, and Rick needed to drive Charlton back to the semi-nearby town they get their supplies to hand him over to the authorities to be arrested for his illegal activities, because they couldn't just leave him lying around tied up in one of the tents until morning, however much Rick wished they could. Therefore it was another several hours before he could expect to get to sleep.

Rick couldn't send any of the other students, because he didn't really trust any of them to be able to find their way there and back in the dark, given how the dig site was out in the desert away from any convenient roads or road signs. He wasn't even sure it they could totally trust the students to find their way there and back during daylight hours. And he couldn't send any of the diggers because the kind of person who signed up for that work was also generally the kind of person who never got the opportunity to learn how to drive.

Oh well, Rick thought with a mental sigh as he pushed Charlton into the passenger seat of one of the trucks they used for transporting supplies and equipment and such, it wouldn't be the first time he was forced to get through a day on a few hours or less of sleep, and it probably wouldn't be the last. And with that, he climbed into the driver's seat and headed out into the night again. At least this time he knew where he was going, though, like earlier in the evening, he would have to go slower than he'd like so as to avoid losing his way.

"I'm guessing Rick isn't taking him off to do some private career counseling," Jonathan mused as he watched the truck's lights recede into the distance.

"No," Evy said, then after a moment of thought corrected herself with, "or rather, he might do a little of that, depending on how bored he gets on the drive, but Charlton is probably going to hear a lot more of that sort of thing from the police than from Rick."

"And the fact that Rick is taking him to the police means that we now have more evidence against him than just an overheard conversation that we can't prove we overheard," Jonathan mused.

"Exactly," Evy said. She turned and headed back toward the tent which she shared with Rick. Jonathan followed her. They both sat down at the small folding table set up to the side of the pair of folding cots. The second cot had originally only been included in the tent's collection of furniture as a concession to the idea that some people might insist that a married couple should at least pretend to adhere to certain standards of 'propriety' while traveling. Evy and Rick had planned to use it as little more than an oversized luggage rack. Unfortunately, the sad reality was that folding cots simply weren't very comfortable for sleeping two people at once, no matter how friendly they were with each other, so after the first few nights of substandard rest, they gave up and started making use of the second cot for its originally designed purpose. Evy and Rick still crowded onto a single cot on a regular basis for activities which didn't involve sleeping, but that was not a subject she was going to discuss with her brother, not then and not ever.

"So are you going to tell me what happened," Jonathan whined when Evy did not immediately share her news, "or do I have to beg first?"

"Well, for a start," Evy said in a low voice, taking the thermos from his hands, grabbing a pair of battered enamel mugs (fine china teacups and saucers were all well and good for when they were closer to civilization, but packing them securely enough to prevent breakage during transport took up more valuable cargo space than Evy wanted to waste) and pouring them each a generous serving of the spiked tea, "he shot Rick."

"He shot Rick?!?" Jonathan spluttered, and Evy had to kick him in the shin to remind him that the tent's walls did practically nothing to prevent their voices from carrying further than they would like. "He shot Rick," Jonathan repeated in a whisper, "and you just let him drive off like that?"

"As my husband has insisted on pointing out multiple times in the hour or so since the incident, it was only a graze and will be fine in practically no time," Evy said. She wrapped her hands around the mug to better enjoy the tea's lingering heat.

"So why did he shoot Rick?"

"Because Charlton found something out there, or at least he thinks he did." Evy leaned in closer and Jonathan followed suit. "We caught him digging into something that could be a manmade entrance. We couldn't take the time to look very closely, but he says he found the Temple of the Crocodile Queen."

"The Temple of the Crocodile Queen?" Jonathan said, sitting up straight at the words. "Now there's a name I haven't heard in forever. Huh...." He took a sip of his tea, raised an eyebrow as he finally realized what his sister had given him, and then drained half the mug while slowly easing back into his more usual lazy sprawl against the back of his chair. "I wonder if he's a member of The Esoteric Order of the Crocodile Queen or if he just got lucky."

"The _what_?"

"The Esoteric Order of the Crocodile Queen."

"Never mind for a moment whether or not Charlton is a member," Evy said. "How did _you_ hear about these people?"

"Because I'm a member? Or, at least, I might still be a member," he continued as he reached for the thermos and refilled his mug. "Come to think of it, I haven't bothered to pay my dues since I left school, so they might have kicked me out at some point. Oh, don't look at me like that, Evy, it's just an excuse for people to get together and have some fun playing at secret societies and spiritualism with an Ancient Egyptian twist while enjoying some good food and drink among friends. Somebody at the university made it up back in the Victorian era based on a few fragments with some drawings of women and crocodiles. You'd have to be crazy to take it seriously, but it does provide a gateway for people to get into more serious archaeology. Father was a member too, said it was one of the things which eventually led to him being in a position to meet Mum," Jonathan said.

He took another long drink while Evy just sat there looking gobsmacked at him. "Hell," he added, "your boss, Sir Anthony, he's a member unless he stopped paying his dues too. I wouldn't be surprised if half the students working under you were members." Evy was still opening and closing her mouth without making any sound, so Jonathan filled the silence by saying, "The only one who would surprise me would be young William. He strikes me as the type who got invited along on this expedition by virtue of his obsession with the minutiae of potsherds rather than because he's fun at parties."

"And why did nobody invite _me_ to this little secret society?" Evy finally asked, her voice gone squeaky with indignation.

"I always thought that somebody did and you turned them down for sounding too silly," Jonathan said with an apologetic shrug. "You have to admit that as a student you never seemed to have time for anything other than studying library science and reading the Bembridge Scholars." He drained his mug and eyed the thermos with obvious thoughts of pouring himself another serving, but he left it alone, probably in deference that there wasn't much left and his sister was liable to want more after everything she had just heard. "Whatever happened, they missed out. No one I remember meeting there was as good at translations as you are, only Sir Anthony came anywhere close. Maybe they knew that and worried you'd do a proper translation of their collection of ancient knickknacks and prove all their fun and games were just a load of bollocks."

"If the Temple of the Crocodile Queen is real," Evy said, "then at least some of it isn't make believe."

"I guess we'll find out soon," Jonathan said. He stifled a sudden yawn, and added, "and we should probably try to be as rested as we can when we do."

Evy agreed absently, and Jonathan wished her good night and then wandered out of the tent, hopefully in the direction of his own bed, leaving Evy to contemplatively sip her spiked tea by lantern light while she waited for Rick to return.

At first light, Evy and Rick took Jonathan and a few diggers back up the valley to investigate the illicit dig site now that they would be able to see it better. They didn't expect to see anyone following in their footsteps, but that was what happened shortly after arriving at the ramp leading up to the stone pillars while they were still looking around for Rick's gun which had been lost the night before.

It was another one of the students, Beatrice, and she stomped up to Evy and demanded to know how they found this place.

"We followed Charlton when he sneaked away from camp," Evy said.

"I'm the one who told him where to find it," Beatrice said haughtily, "and he works for me, so this find is mine."

"By that logic, you work for me, so it's mine," Evy countered. "But also by that logic, we're both working for Sir Anthony, and the university, and the Egyptian government, so they'll get to fight over which of them it belongs to. Whoever wins, you're not keeping it and we're not keeping it, but if you want credit for the discovery then be our guest."

"No, seriously," Rick added from where he had been watching the sidelines, "be our guest. People thinking you're good at finding lost treasure is more trouble than it's worth. Trust me, I know from experience."

"But that's how you met me!" Evy exclaimed with mock offense.

"Yes," Rick said, "and meeting any more people just like you would be too many. One of you is all I can keep up with."

"And If I refuse to settle for your crumbs?" Beatrice demanded, clearly annoyed that Evy and Rick were not takind her claims with the seriousness they deserved.

"Well, your buddy kinda shot me," Rick said, "and by your own admission he was working for you when he did it, so if you don't feel like playing nice, then we don't have to either, in which case we can send to cool your heels with him in the lockup back in town."

"And think before you answer," Evy warned, "because Egyptian jails aren't any fun."

Rick nodded. "That's another thing I know from experience."

Beatrice looked like she wants to argue more, but she grudgingly agreed. She didn't seem particularly sincere about it, though.

"Shes going to be trouble," Evy and Rick muttered in unison as they watched her stomp off to "supervise" the diggers Evy and Rick had brought up with them. They knew they were going to have to keep an eye on her. It was tempting to just go ahead and throw her in jail and be done with it already, but her admission of guilt to them wouldn't get them very far if she decided to change her story.

"Just once I'd like to have a dig where no one feels the need to accuse anyone else of theft or encroaching on each other's territory," Evy complained.

Rick nodded in agreement, but then a thought struck him. "Wait," he said, "if she was the one who had the map first or however she found the place, does that make us Beni in this situation? Because I don't want to be Beni."

"If push comes to shove, we can claim Jonathan is Beni," Evy said, "though even he isn't weaselly enough to properly fill the role. Now, let's go see what we have here, whoever gets to claim it in the end."

By daylight, they could see that the temple was carved into the rock of the hillside, though it was still difficult to tell whether the pillars were wholly the work of human hands or if they had originally been a natural formation which had been modified to the purpose. Once they forced the door open (and spent an awkward half a day waiting for the stale air trapped inside for millenia to exchange for something more breathable) they discovered that the interior was a strange mix of architectural styles, seemingly part temple and part tomb.

"What exactly did your little club's collections say about this place?" Evy asked Jonathan as they explored with flashlights, lanterns, and, in a few cases, torches made from lengths of solid wood wrapped with rags soaked in kerosene at one end and set alight.

Jonathan, who had opted for one of the torches, just in case he needed to hit something with it, like perhaps any mummies who might choose to jump out at them from shadowy corners, shrugged and said, "To be honest, I never paid much attention to any of that, I was just in it for the convivial atmosphere."

Thick stone pillars supported the ceiling of a large central chamber which contained a depression in its center which looked like it might have been some kind of ceremonial pool back when the temple was seeing regular use. The walls and columns were covered in hieroglyphic inscriptions and painted sunk relief carvings of larger than life figures. Two passages lead deeper into the hillside from the back wall. There were also deep niches running along the walls at chest height.

The niches were mostly filled with piles of small bundles, but one held a single huge bundle whose long and skinny shape made Rick ask, "What is that, a mummified canoe?"

"These are all animal mummies, probably votive offerings to Sobek in hopes he would grace the supplicants with fertility," Evy told him, shining her flashlight on the images of the crocodile headed god who had a prominent role in most of the images adorning the walls. "The big one is probably a sacred crocodile."

"Can't say I've ever associated crocodiles with fertility," Rick said.

"Ol' Sobek was a randy old bugger," Jonathan assured him, "famous for going after anything that moved, and not just for eating, if you catch my drift."

"I'll take your word for it," Rick said, and they got on with the work of cataloging the find.

* * *

"Now, the first rule before we go in," Rick lectured the university students some time later as they all stood lined up awaiting permission to be allowed inside, "is don't read out loud from any mysterious metal books you might find lying around in there, because you never know when you might accidentally wake up an evil mummy who wants to destroy the world."

The students all dutifully pretended to laugh at what they assumed was a joke.

"And maybe don't read aloud from any scrolls or wall carvings, either," Evy added, "in case the priests responsible for this site were of a more traditionalist bent than the ones at Hamunaptra."

There was more forced laughter, this time with even less effort put into it than before.

"Really," Rick continued, "it's probably best if you just don't read anything out loud before making absolutely sure that it isn't any kind of ancient spell."

"Because you accidentally raise the dead just once," Evy said, "and your future husband will never let you live it down."

No one bothered to pretend to laugh anymore. Some of the students, including Beatrice, were visibly rolling their eyes in exasperation.

Evy and Rick realized that when it came to the possibility of someone triggering mystical shenanigans, all they could do was hope for the best, because very few modern Englishmen or women were going to believe those kinds of warnings until after it was too late.

They gave the rest of their instructions and were just about to send everyone in to begin work when a deep voice with an aristocratic accent echoed up the valley, calling, "I dropped by to see how things were going at my dig site only to find the place practically deserted and be told that all the excitement was up here. Also, I brought along a certain someone who appears to have been left back in town to miss the fun."

It was Sir Anthony, and he had a not particularly contrite looking Charlton following close at his heels.

"There's no way you got here from London that fast," Evy exclaimed once the men drew close enough that they didn't need to shout at each other across the valley.

"And that guy was in jail for a reason," Rick added.

"I've been on holiday in Cairo, and the university has been forwarding your telegrams to me there to keep me abreast of the situation," Sir Anthony said, surveying the area around them with a sharp eye. "The latest news sounded too good to not come over and see for myself. I've been stuck in a car all day getting here, so I'm pleased to see that I haven't wasted my time. As for this rascal here," Sir Anthony said, throwing an arm around Charlton's shoulders, "I'm sure that whatever he stands accused of was just an unfortunate misunderstanding, just boys being boys if you will."

"He shot me," Rick said flatly. "Among other things."

"Yet here you stand, looking hale and hearty, so it couldn't have been that bad," Sir Anthony said. The amiable grin never left his face. It also never quite reached his eyes.

"Sir," Evy exclaimed, "his lack of skill in the action doesn't excuse the fact that he attempted it at all!"

"From what I hear," Sir Anthony said, "you wouldn't have access to this wonderful discovery at all if not for Charlton."

"From what we here," Rick said, "he was just doing the grunt work for Beatrice, which is another thing we need to discuss with you."

"And yet giving the boy a second chance would be so much easier than the university archaeology department needing to tighten its belt should his parents decide to stop donating to our efforts." And with that, Sir Anthony swept Charlton to rejoin the rest of the students without giving Evy or Rick the chance to continue arguing their case.

"I don't like this turn of events at all," Evy said as she watched Sir Anthony greeting all the students.

"You and me both," Rick muttered.

"I suppose there's nothing for it but to keep a sharp eye on everyone and hope for the best."

"That, and not sign up for any more digs with guy if he's still willing to hire us again at the end of all this."

"Agreed," Evy said, and with that, they strode back into the thick of things and got to work.

* * *

As soon as everything has been photographed to document their original positions, they started packing up some of the most valuable looking small items and taking them down to the main camp, where they were then inspected, repacked, and sent to a warehouse rented back in town to better secure them against potential theft. The work continued like that for several days without incident. Every time a new batch arrived at the main camp, the few students and diggers who had stayed behind to keep working at the original site abandoned their tools and crowded around to get a better look at the items as they were transferred to more permanent storage crates that were sturdy enough to survive the rigors of transport to their final destination.

Evy had only turned her back for a moment to demonstrate to someone the best way to nestle an artifact into its bed of excelsior shavings to keep it from shifting too much, when Charlton, who Evy and Rick had insisted accompany them back and forth up and down the valley every time so that he could remain under their supervision, picked up one of the items and held it aloft to display it for all to see how much higher quality it was than the broken pieces they had been digging out of the midden heaps.

Rick must have also gotten distracted for a moment, because like Evy, he did not catch on to what had the potential to happen until it was too late.

Someone must have challenged him to prove that he could read the writing on the surface said, because Evy realized what was happening, she was listening to Charlton read out the text. Neither Evy nor Rick were close enough to push through the crowd and interrupt Charlton in time, and of course he ignored their shouts at him to stop. His cadence was awkward, and there was no telling whether he would be able to translate the text into English or merely knew how to read hieroglyphics phonetically, but apparently his pronunciation was good enough for the Egyptian Gods or whatever mystical force was in charge of giving supernatural oomph to this kind of thing, because suddenly the ground was shaking and sand blowing in all directions, with an especially ominous dust devil column rising hundreds of feet into the air from the general direction of the temple site.

"That can't be good," Rick muttered as he and Evy stumbled to keep their balance and everyone around them did the same. "What exactly did he just say?"

The shaking and the wind died away, but they both knew there was no way that was the end of the matter. The Carnahan-O'Connell family didn't have that kind of luck.

Evy ran through the words in her head and translated, "He called to 'the Queen of the Crocodiles,' telling her to 'come forth from your slumber once again and see the land of the living, which you will never leave.'"

"Definitely not good," Rick said.

"Definitely not," she agreed. "We need to get back there."

As one, they turned and started running back up the valley, trying to get back to the temple before the Crocodile Queen, whoever she was, escaped from it. They were somewhat surprised to notice that Charlton was running back up the valley with them, but neither of the wanted to waste their breath asking him why. The urgency of the situation gave extra swiftness to their legs. No one particularly cared about trying to conserve their energy or picking a meandering path up the valley to stay out of the worst of the sun like they usually did, so they all ran the distance back to the temple in record time.

They arrived to find everyone milling around uncertainly outside of the temple and a few people giving each other first aid for what appeared to be cuts and bruises, probably sustained from falling rocks or other objects, but no immediate signs of rampaging crocodile queens, whatever that was supposed to look like. Evy hoped it wouldn't involve more plagues. She had really hated that part even more than she had hated all the rest of dealing with Imhotep.

Jonathan joined them with complaints about the sudden shaking but assurances that a headcount revealed that everyone had made it out of the temple. "It's mummies, isn't it?" he complained at the end of giving his situation report.

"Yeah, probably," Rick said.

Evy and Rick climbed up the ramp and peeked in through the entrance, almost getting pushed inside by everyone else crowding up behind them as they went. Fortunately, they were were able to push back against the force and hold their ground, because from where they braced themselves in the doorway they could see a large and distinctly inhuman shape moving awkwardly around in the darkened interior. The top half seemed more or less normal for a person, but down closer to the ground things got stranger, with too much bulk and too many limbs, and Rick didn't really want to think about the strange way those parts met in the middle, but they were probably going to need to fight this thing soon, so he didn't really have a choice if the wanted the best chance of staying alive.

Surprisingly, it was Jonathan who cut to the chase and tried to block the temple entrance by blowing up a stick of dynamite stolen from Rick. He probably figured that it had worked that time when Ardeth had been fighting the mummies, so might as well try it again now. Before anyone could guess what he was doing, he stole the stick of dynamite which Rick habitually carried around tucked into his belt, where no one had really been questioning its presence, at least not to Rick's face. Everyone just figured that carrying around random sticks of dynamite was just something that Americans did and they didn't want to get in an argument with a guy who made a point of wearing both guns and explosives as part of day to day life at an archaeological dig site. The truth was that Rick kept it around for just these sorts of occasions, so he didn't put any particular effort into fighting Jonathan to get it back when he saw what his brother-in-law was doing.

Evy, however, also realized what Jonathan intended to do, and while she didn't want to let the mummy escape, she didn't want to destroy the whole temple in the process if it could be avoided, and that might be exactly what happened if somebody set off a stick of dynamite right next to one of the interior support pillars. She grabbed for the dynamite just as her brother lit the fuse with a match he had struck against the rock wall. Jonathan, of course, didn't want to let her have it, especially not now that it was actively burning, and the resulting brief scuffle drew the attention of the large figure in the shadows, who ceased its apparently aimless wandering around the interior space and started heading toward the entrance.

Rick yelled for everyone to get back, because for some members of their group, neither a lit stick of dynamite in their general vicinity nor seeing a monster charging in their direction was enough to spur them into getting out of the way without a direct order to do so. Maybe it was simply too far outside of their usual realm of experience for them to believe their eyes. Rick didn't care about the reasons why. He just wanted them to start getting out of harm's way.

At this point the monster was coming at them fast enough that blowing one of the main support pillars might not do them any good because the creature would already be past that area and out the door when the dynamite went off and brought down the ceiling. Evy had given up trying to stop him, but Jonathan was kind of panicking though and looked like he was going to throw it at the monster's face and hope for the best, so Rick caught him by the wrist as he pulled back to throw. 

"What are you doing?!?" Jonathan shrieked, though in later retellings of the event he would insist that it was a manly bellow.

In answer, Rick grabbed the burning fuse and twisted it around to light a section much closer to the dynamite, drastically shortening the time before it went off.

"Now you can throw it," Rick said and stepped out of the way.

Jonathan threw the dynamite at the monster, who promptly smacked it out of the air, sending it right back at them. The fuse was too short to risk trying to pick it up and throw it a second time, so everyone had to scramble to get to safety, since the small distance that most of them had retreated when Rick yelled at them clearly wasn't going to be enough. All three of the Carnahan-O'Connell family were at the back of the line for escape, and in their hurry ended up using the rocky ramp as an impromptu sliding board. As they tumbled to a halt at the base of it there was a loud boom as the dynamite exploded.

Fragments of stone rained down around everyone. Unfortunately, when they looked up from ducking for cover, they saw that the blast had failed to close off the entrance to the temple. Instead, it had blown the opening even wider, making any other immediate efforts to block it quickly impossible.

The Crocodile Queen stepped out into the sunlight, allowing everyone to get their first good look at her. She has the body of a beautiful woman down to the waist, but where her hips and legs should have been was a large crocodile. If human and reptile parts had been joined together like some kind of centaur it would have been bad enough, but the crocodile still had its massive head and the woman's torso connected to the stump of its upraised tail so that wherever she went she was proceeded by the reptile's jaws.

As luck would have it, Charlton just happened to dive for cover right behind the boulder which Rick's gun had gotten lost under during their original confrontation and, until that moment, no one seen it since. Spotting the weapon, he grabbed it. They say that when all you have is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail. In Charlton's case, when all he had was a gun, then every suddenly appearing chimeric mummy monster looked like a convenient target.

He shot her with surprisingly good aim for someone who likely had never touched a pistol before, but seeing as how she wasn't alive in the traditional sense, his marksmanship didn't accomplish very much. She staggered a little bit from the impact. A little bit of dust trickled out of the hole the bullet puts in her shoulder. Mostly, it just drew all of her attention, from both the human and the crocodile head, onto Charlton.

"Don't bother," Rick shouted to him. "Shooting mummies is never as helpful at it looks like it should be!"

Charlton ignored Rick and shot at the Crocodile Queen again, because the first time was just sooo amazingly effective that doing it again seemed like the best idea in the world to him, as if maybe she just didn't understand what getting shot was supposed to mean and if he does it again for emphasis then she would finally get the message and keel over fully dead like he wants her to. The second bullet hits home as accurately as the first. It had as little effect as the first.

"Damn it," Rick grumbled as he searched for some way to salvage the situation, "why don't any of these kids ever listen to me?"

"I don't know, dear," Evy said as she too tried and failed to find something that might be a good distraction, "but it's their loss."

In Charlton's case it really was his loss, because if the Crocodile Queen had been a living human, then her survival would be in serious jeopardy right now, but she was not, so Charlton was the one in trouble. If he had only shot her the one time, she might not have figured out who had done the deed due to it being her first encounter with a firearm. However, all four of her eyes were on him the second time, and unlike Charlton she wasn't an idiot, so it wasn't hard for her to figure out who was putting the most effort into trying to hurt her in that moment.

Crocodiles were capable of moving amazingly fast over short distances, which the Crocodile Queen proved by hurling herself down the stone ramp at her would-be killer, a combination of running, slithering, and sliding, all while the crocodile body kept its tail bent upward at an unnatural angle to keep the human part of her body upright. She was on him in an instant, knocking him to the rocky ground before he could fire a third shot. She screamed something at him in Ancient Egyptian while her crocodile part bit him in half, swallowing the chunk it took out of his middle and then swallowing the remaining pieces of him. In seconds, a smear of blood on the rocks was the only evidence he had ever been there at all.

Later, Evy would tell Rick that the Crocodile Queen had been shouting something along the lines of "How dare you disrespect me like that?" but she couldn't catch the rest of it because everyone was too busy running away and screaming. Fortunately, crocodiles, despite their ability to put on short bursts of speed, weren't very good at navigating heavily uneven ground strewn with large rocks ranging in size from pebbles and cobblestones to large boulders, so the people running away on human legs had the advantage and were able to escape, at least for now.

When everyone staggered back to the camp near the main dig site, Sir Anthony, the head of the university archaeology department was there waiting for them, having arrived back from his daily trip into town while they were gone. Beatrice immediately runs over and begins reporting to him, doing her best to make herself look good while badmouthing Evy and Rick (and mostly seeming to forget Jonathan exists at all). She also happily lay a lot of blame on Charlton, since he wasn't around to defend himself anymore and had apparently been Beatrice's academic rival.

There wasn't much time for chitchat, though, because there was still a rampaging mummy heading down the valley, looking for some catharsis through destruction. They had managed to get a little bit of a lead on her thanks to the rocky ground, but the terrain evened out shortly before the valley opened out to the area around the camp, so that advantage was going to be short lived. Also, the ordinary humans could only go so far and so fast before they ran themselves into exhaustion, whereas being undead made the Crocodile Queen pretty much indefatigable.

The tents of the camp might have been able to serve as temporary hiding places from the Crocodile Queen, but their flimsy canvas walls would no real physical protection beyond the faint hope of "out of sight, out of mind." People could try scattering into the surrounding desert under the principle that she wouldn't be able to chase all of them, but that would leave the slowest and weakest (or possibly just the worst at playing hide and seek) at her mercy, and there would be no way of knowing when it would be safe to return to camp, so Evy and Rick didn't like that idea. There weren't enough vehicles to evacuate everyone back to town all at once, and even if there were, it would only be a temporary solution since running away wouldn't solve the main problem of a mummy on the loose.

The Carnahan-O'Connell family held a hurried discussion about what to do.

Jonathan wanted to find the rest of the camp's dynamite supply and just blow the Crocodile Queen to pieces. Even if it wasn't a permanent solution, it should buy them more time, and if it did turn out to be a permanent solution thanks to the Crocodile Queen maybe not being able to put herself back together like certain mummies they had met in the past, then great, problem solved and time to celebrate and/or get back to work. Unfortunately, they had only had any dynamite in the first place because they had needed it to clear a large rock slide on the road between the camp and the town and Rick had appropriated a stick of it for his own personal emergency stash "just in case." Evy didn't like it being used in the actual excavation work on the dig site because the shock waves from the explosions were too likely to damage the delicate ancient artifacts, so rather than have piles of it lying around and tempting people to take the shortcut of using it or just plain risking a very unfortunate accident, Evy had chosen not to requisition any more.

Rick voted for trying to set the mummy on fire, but Evy didn't want to get up to those kinds of shenanigans while her boss was watching, even if the guy had been acting kind of questionably since arriving, such as how he hadn't seemed nearly as surprised as he should have been when Beatrice started telling him about mummies come to life. Also, if they did manage to set the mummy on fire but she decided to run around flailing her arms while she burned, then she would probably burn down the entire camp in the process, which once again returned to being the kind of shenanigans she didn't want to get up to while her boss was watching.

In the interest of not destroying the camp by fire, Evy came up with the idea of luring the Crocodile Queen out into the desert, away from where the noncombatants would be sent to hide in the opposite direction. Once they were away from vulnerable people and structures and valuable artifacts, they would have more freedom to deal with the mummy with less fear of collateral damage.

Sir Anthony liked that idea. He even volunteered to drive the car which he arrived in instead of making them all rattle around in one of the awkward and uncomfortable trucks which they have been using to bring in supplies from town. Evy, Rick, and Jonathan considered arguing with him, but an unearthly scream cut through the air before any of them could say anything.

The time for arguing had passed, because the Crocodile Queen had arrived. She immediately started going after the last of the retreating diggers, and Rick was forced to run at her while shouting and waving his arms to make himself her new target while the others escaped.

Sir Andrew and Jonathan rushed into the car, and Evy and Rick dove in soon after with matching shouts of, "Time to go!" and the mummy in hot pursuit.

Sir Anthony floored it, and the car sped off, leaving a plume of sand and gravel thrown up by its tires behind it.

"Slow down," Evy shouted in response.

"There's no need to worry," Sir Andrew said. "I am in perfect control of the vehicle, I assure you."

"If you're in perfect control, then slow down," Evy sais. "The plan was to keep her more interested in following us than turning around to go back for the rest of the team. That's not very likely to happen if we leave her far enough behind to disappear over the horizon."

"Very well," Sir Andrew grumble. He grudgingly eased up on the gas and shifted the car into a lower gear, allowing the Crocodile Queen to gain on them a little bit.

Evy, Rick, and Jonathan debated how exactly they should deal with the Crocodile Queen now that they have more or less ensured the safety of the other people who had been with them at the dig site, minus Charlton, who had been eaten. They quickly came to the realization that they might have left the camp in a little bit of too much of a hurry, because in their rush they didn't manage to bring anything with them that seemed like it would be particularly useful in fighting the undead. They basically had what was already been in Sir Anthony's car when he arrived: a map, a jug of drinking water, some dried fruit for snacks, a spare tire, and a jerrycan of extra gasoline.

"We could still try to set her on fire," Rick suggested.

"No, Rick," Evy said. "It's too dangerous. Besides, at this point, even if we wanted to, we wouldn't be able to set up any kind of a trap without her watching us do it."

"Don't worry," Sir Anthony said, grinning, "I know a place we can lead her which should have everything we need. The warehouse should be sturdy enough to trap her inside, at which point we can do what needs to be done." Bringing her so close to town would potentially endangered that whole population, but at least the warehouse was out on the edge of the developed area, so they would not have to bring her right into the center of everything. Also, Sir Anthony didn't want to take no for an answer on the matter, so the Carnahan-O'Connell family didn't have much of a choice anymore unless they wanted to physically fight him for control of the car, which didn't seem like a much better option given how he was still Evy's boss and there was still a dangerous mummy following right behind them, ready to pounce if they slowed down too much or, even worse, happened to crash.

With that in mind, Evy, Rick, and Jonathan allowed Sir Anthony to drive them to the warehouse. They were rewarded for their forbearance with prompt betrayal.

As soon as they lured the Crocodile Queen within the thick stone walls of the warehouse and trapped her inside with them, Sir Anthony shouted something to her in Ancient Egyptian and pointed at Rick and Jonathan, causing her to throw herself at them with a roar.

Having definitive proof that there wasn't any point in trying to play nice with Sir Anthony anymore, Rick took a swing at the man since he happened to still be within reach. Giving the man a swift uppercut to the jaw was practically an instinctive move on Rick's part. It wiped the smirk off of his face and knocked him down, but it wasn't quite enough to knock him out. At least it gave Evy and Jonathan time to get to higher ground out of reach of the Crocodile Queen atop the piles of crates full of artifacts. Which the warehouse had been protecting

With no better weapons at hand, Evy and Jonathan tried to pull off the lids of the crates which they were standing on top of, in hopes of possibly finding something with a useful inscription and fighting magic with magic, but the lids were firmly nailed down, so there wasn't much that the two could do with their bare hands, especially not in such a short period of time. However, as Jonathan bemoaned not paying closer attention to the inscriptions on the artifacts before packing them up for shipment, Evy remembered that she still had the small artifact which Charlton had read from to wake the Crocodile Queen, because she snatched it out of his hands to keep him from potentially doing more damage with it than he already had, shoving it into a pocket and forgetting about it in the all the excitement which followed. She pulled it out and showed it to Jonathan in hopes that they might be able to find something useful in its tightly packed text.

Meanwhile, Rick tried to keep both the Crocodile Queen and Sir Anthony distracted from attacking his wife and brother-in-law as they did their translations. Unfortunately, Rick got too close to the Crocodile Queen and she used her crocodile head like a baseball bat to swat him aside with one twist of her massive neck muscles. He flew through the air and slammed into one of the crates, breaking it open in the process. That didn't feel like it had been any good for his head or his ribs or any other part of his body, not to mention his still healing bullet wound. As Rick tried to get back to his feet, Sir Anthony walked over and kicked him aside to get him out of the hole in the crate.

Sir Anthony reached into the hole, fished around in the fluffy packing material, and pulled out a statue of Sobek, which had something inscribed on the back of it. Thinking it might give him direct control over the Crocodile Queen, he read it aloud, because of course he has been studying up on the language in preparation for this apparent power grab. His words echoed through the warehouse, but seemed to have no effect on the Crocodile Queen, who had gone back to circling around the pile of crates which Evy and Jonathan have sought refuge atop.

In frustration, he shouted, "Come to me, I command you!" in Ancient Egyptian.

The Crocodile Queen continued to ignore him, but something else responded. Loud rustling and thumping noises emanated from within the largest crate in the warehouse as whatever was inside started thrashing around.

"That can't be good," Rick groans from where he was still trying to pick himself up off the floor.

Sir Anthony repeated his command, and the noises intensified in both volume and cadence. The huge crate began rocking and then, with a crack like thunder, the wood broke open, having been violently smashed to splinters from the inside by its thrashing contents. A large, intricately wrapped bundle like a fourteen foot cigar squirmed and rolled it way out of the remains of the broken crate and onto the warehouse floor. It was the huge mummifies crocodile from the temple.

"Rick," Evy shouted, seeing what was happening, "get out of there!"

"At least we only found the one," Jonathan said, offering what small consolation he could think of in the moment.

"I wouldn't be so sure of that," Evy said with dread, because she had read about what people sometimes found when they unwrapped huge crocodile mummies like that.

As if hearing her words, the crocodile's bandages, which had somehow remained intact through all the previous thrashing, torr apart revealing that it was not the mummy of a single XXXL crocodile, but two somewhat more ordinary XL sized mummified crocodiles and dozens of little baby crocodiles, and they were all heading toward Rick, spreading out to encircle him.

Rick took a few wild shots at the advancing crocodiles as he finally managed to recover enough to stagger to his feet. The tiny crocodiles shattered to dust when he hit them, but it was obvious that he didn't have enough bullets to take out all of the babies even if he somehow found time to reload before the next attack, and the larger mummy crocodiles were obviously too big to bother shooting, given what he knew of mummy resilience.

"If you can see a way out of this from where you are, Evy," Rick called out, "I could really use the help!"

Evy scanned the area frantically, looking for potential weapons Rick could use or weaknesses he could exploit. She only saw one, but given the circumstances, she was a lot less reluctant to suggest it than she would have been the day before.

"Aim for the head," she orders.

"That's the boniest part of the crocodile! It's not going to do anything"

"Not the head of the crocodiles," she shouted frantically, "the head of the snake."

"What?" Rick said. Then he realized exactly what she was implying: take out the person in charge so the crocodiles won't have anyone giving them orders anymore. He quickly spun to fire at Sir Anthony instead of the crocodiles.

However, the man had figured out Evy's clue a moment before Rick did and was already diving for cover among the crates of artifacts, so the bullet missed its mark. Rick tried to get off another shot before Sir Anthony was out of sight, but all he managed was the unfortunate "click" of his gun's hammer falling on an empty chamber.

Sir Anthony's voice rang out from somewhere in the warehouse, announcing that he had wanted to get Rick and Jonathan out of the way and make Evy his wife, but given her current behavior and the fact that he didn't seem to need her help to cast spells llike he had originally thought he might after first hearing reports of what she had done to Hamunaptra, it would be better for him to kill her along with her husband instead of just leaving her a widow. Maybe, he continued, he'd take Beatrice for a wife instead. She would be the lesser prize, but her youth meant she was still malleable enough to train into something useful, and it would be an amusing way to pass the time once his mastery of magic made everything else breathtakingly simple.

The crocodiles had Rick surrounded by then, the big ones biting at him whenever he tries to stomp on the remaining little ones. He couldn't take enough of his attention away from the undead reptiles to reload his gun, just as he had suspected would be the case. Then he got an idea. He waited for one of the large crocodiles to bite at him again, at which point he darted out of the way yet again, but rather than retreating as far as possible before the other large crocodile tried to take a bite out of him, he instead lunged toward and over top of the first one before it had time to open its mouth again. He ran for the pile of crates where Evy and Jonathan were, and they helped him scramble to safety, the crocodiles' jaws snapping shut inches from his heels as he half climbed and half was hoisted out of reach.

With nothing left to try, Evy attempted to do what they maybe should have tried earlier: reasoning with the Crocodile Queen. Evy's grasp of the Ancient Egyptian language was better than Sir Anthony's, so she was able to make a better argument for the Crocodile Queen joining Team Carnahan-O'Connell than Sir Anthony could make for her staying teamed up with him, especially after Evy explained exactly what a sexist asshole Sir Anthony has been being.

As it turned out, the Crocodile Queen was in her current situation because of a priest who wanted her girlfriend for himself. When her beloved girlfriend disappeared into the desert and presumably died there rather than be with him, the priest decided to make it so that the Crocodile Queen would never be able to join her in the afterlife and even if she somehow managed that, she would arrive in the form of a monster so he would be the more attractive option to the girlfriend who would undoubtedly already be there waiting for him. The joke was on the Priest, though, because instead of waiting for him with open arms in the afterlife, Girlfriend reincarnated to try to get back together with the Crocodile Queen.

Sir Anthony tried to argue with the Crocodile Queen, but she was no longer in the mood to hear anything from, so her crocodile half ate him just like it did Charlton. Bad guy defeated. This did however raise some uncomfortable questions about how the Carnahan-O'Connell family was going to explain events to the university, but that could wait until later. Before that, there was the matter of finally helping the Crocodile Queen finally finding peace.

The reason why the Ancient Egyptians didn't use their power to make themselves immortal was because the next world was the one where they wanted to ensure their everlasting life, not this one. Imhotep and Anck Su Namun had been outliers, because Imhotep had wanted to resurrect Anck Su Namun after her death so that they could evade the consequences which they would have inevitably faced if they had passed into the underworld to face the Weighing Of The Heart ceremony like normal people. Evy suspected that the priest who had wronged the Crocodile Queen faced some very drastic consequences when he got to that part of his journey through the afterlife, because the price for being found with evil in your heart when weighing it against the feather of truth was having said heart eaten by Ammut the Devourer, and where the heart went, so went the soul.

The Crocodile Queen did not want to linger in this world after her death, not even if there had been a way to restore her to her original body. Ultimately, she wanted to continue on the cosmic journey which her soul had been created for, and that journey was becoming even more appealing as the initial rage faded away and she saw that random violence was not gaining her the revenge she had hoped for. She did not know if she would be worthy of finding reunion with her lost love or if her recent actions had earned her soul's destruction, but either way she would welcome an end to being caught between life and death where she could enjoy neither.

Between Evy, Jonathan, and Beatrice, who they picked up when they returned to the dig site, they had enough people familiar enough with the Ancient Egyptian language and enough knowledge of the ceremonies to perform an acceptable approximation of everything the Crocodile Queen needed to rest in peace at last. With that in mind, they were able to convince her to order the still dangerous crocodile mummies back into a state of full death. Then she accompanied the Carnahan-O'Connell family back to her temple, where she allowed herself to be entombed once more.

Afterward, they had the diggers fill in the entrance again with as many boulders as the team could move, with the warning that the Crocodile Queen herself would visit bloody vengeance on whoever allowed the tomb to be discovered again. They had to give up the valuable dig site, but it was a small price to pay for a relatively peaceful resolution. Besides, they were probably out of a job anyway, given what happened to Sir Anthony and Charlton.

As the Carnahan O'Connell family drove away from the abandoned dig site for the final time, they began making plans for what they wanted to do next. Maybe they would try to find Ardeth Bey and his Medjai and see if they wanted to add another site to the list of places they protect from people who go digging around where they shouldn't. It would be both a good way to prevent a repeat of their most recent mummy problem and a nice excuse to drop in and say hello.

**The End**


End file.
